She opened her mouth wide (yawn, the first thing thought it). She scratched with one of her two paws at the space under her left arm. “Fix it?” she asked.

“What the hell’s it look like?” he answered.

“Cute, cute. Alla time with the wide-eyed, wise answers.” Her face grew annoyed—her thoughts grew annoyed. “Where’s the marks?”

The first thing pointed toward Skilton and the calf-pups on the edge of the plain.

“There they be, me sweet young pretty. There they be.”

She let her eyes follow his hand. Her eyes grew larger.

“Them? Them things? That’s what we’re gonna play to?”

He shrugged. “We got any better?”

“You use the civilcometer? Check, if there’s any culture?”

He nodded. “Not a trace of a city. If there’s life here, that’s it.”

She let her tongue lick her lower lip. “You sure this is the planet?”

He pulled a sheaf of odd, thin skin from a hole in his own skin, and unfolded it. He ran a finger down a column, said to her “The record says a show-ship came by here in ‘27…gave three hundred consecutive performances. Carted off a whole shipful of raw sogoth fiber. They called the place The Palace. Must be…only planet on these co-ords.”

She gave him a rueful look as he folded the skin away into his own baggy hide.

“I ain’t doing my act for them shaggy lap-dogs!”

“Aw, Marge, for Chrissakes, we done our act before worse than this. Them three-eyed slugs on Deepassa…or them little spike-balls on Garrity’s Hell…or them…”

She cut him off with a wave of her hand, sharp and final. “No!”

“Aw, Marge, for Chrissakes, you gotta at least test ‘em. You gotta see if maybe they ain’t intelligent.”

She screwed her face up horribly. “Take a look at the damned things…you can see they ain’t nothin’ but eight-legged mutts!”

At this point, Skilton felt things had advanced poorly enough. He sensed the rest of the tribe loping in behind them. Now was the moment for him to make his appeal to his gods, to the Lams who had come at last.